Little House by the Railway Line

2009 Goals

Learn to make yoghurt
Pickle walnuts
~~Make marmalade~~
Perfect my granola bar recipe
Grow green beans to eat
~~Grow spinach~~
Grow peppers and winter squash
Save seeds from peppers and winter squash
Knit lots of dishcloths
Finish my hidden stars quilt
Make napkin rings
Finish cardigan back
Learn how to do water-bath-canning
Knit a pair of socks

Preserved this Year

February: Marmalade, 10 1/2 standard jars, 2 tiny jars
February: Blatjang chutney, 6 jars
March: Caramelised onion chutney, 6 jars
June: Elderflower cordial, 5 jars
June: Strawberry Jam, 7 standard jars, 3 tiny jars
June: Elderflower cordial, 4 1/2 jars (2nd batch)

Projects in Progress/ Planned

Navy and pink lap quilt
Hidden stars bed quilt
Sampler cardigan
Amish Alphabet Cross-Stitch
Knitted scrap blanket
Planned: summer blouse and skirt

Scripture Memorised this Year

Psalm 8
Psalm 103
Romans 12
Romans 13

Elderflower cordial

12:03, Friday 5 June 2009 .. Posted in Preserving .. 2 comments .. Link

Last year we missed the elderflower crop, and I was determined to catch it this year. There's an elder tree just beyond the fence at the bottom of our garden, and I can reach some of the branches, so on Monday I pilfered it for flower heads and set up the cordial to sit overnight.

The recipe started with 2 lbs sugar with 1pt boiling water poured over and stir till they dissolve. The recipe then said to add citric acid, but I had been unable to get hold of any (apparently it has some use in the consumption of hard drugs and is no longer widely available - I could have ordered some from ebay, but decided against it), so I used bottled lemon juice. It may make the coridal more lemony than it ought to be, I suppose, but I thought it would be worth trying. Then I added the zest of a lemon, and the sliced flesh, before adding the elderflower heads (washed) and covering to sit overnight.

After a panic the following day when I couldn't find my butter muslin to strain it though (I foolishly thought it would be in the box of preserving equipment, and it turned out to be in the bottom of my sewing basket - obviously....), I strained the liquid out and put into jars. I then water-bath-canned it on Wednesday evening.

I'm supposed to leave it for about a month before drinking, but we may get impatient before then. I'm hoping it's worked - elderflower cordial is really lovely, and so expensive in the shops!.

Making Marmalade

15:11, Monday 9 February 2009 .. Posted in Preserving .. 2 comments .. Link

Last week I realised that Seville Oranges were "in season" (not here, obviously, but in Spain, so that's as close as it gets for England). I was feeling like it had been rather a long time since I'd been able to make jams and was missing it, so thought my husband might like a supply of homemade marmalade. He agreed, and bought the supplies while he did the grocery run on Friday night - Seville Oranges and lots of sugar.

I used the recipe in Delia Smith's How to Cook Book Three, but I think the one on the orange bag looked about the same. I had to scale the recipe up, though, as the recipe was for 2lb of oranges, and they were sold in bags of 1.5kg (about 2lb). What I thought was really odd was that the recipe on the side of the bag used 1kg of oranges, and they only sell them in 1.5kg bags. Thought that was a bit cheeky, forcing you to buy more than you need (especially since they're too sour to eat - the only other thing I think you could do with them would by candy them, and that look far more complicated than marmalade).

First, I juiced the oranges (and one lemon, for additional pectin).

Then strained the pips out of the juice through muslin.

That was an incredibly sticky and messy procedure. It was also quite painful for me, as there's a patch on one of my fingers where, inexplicably, the skin is very dry and tends to crack and break. I think some of the citric acid got in and it stung like crazy. Next time I do this, I will wear rubber gloves.

Then I scraped the segment-skin and pith out of the skin and added them to the muslin, while G shredded the peel (quite coarsely, partly because he likes thick-shred marmalade, and partly because ti was quicker that way). The juice and the peel went into the pan, and I tied the muslin into a bag and onto the side of the pan.

Then we let that cook for a while. It was supposed to be about two hours, until the peel goes soft and the pith dissolves into pectin, but I ended up leaving it for about three, as a friend came round with her baby for a visit and we had lunch.

Then I removed the bag and added the sugar.

I stirred that slowly over a low heat until the sugar crystals had all dissolved.

Then brought it to a rolling boil and left for fifteen minutes to reduce before testing for set.

It looks markedly different there to before reducing, which I hadn't noticed while actually making it on Saturday.

When it had set we sterilised jars and poured it in. I'm always glad to have G's help at this point, when I start lifting a huge pan of boiling sugary liquid. We got 11 decent sized jars, 2 little ones, and half of another random one that I hadn't anticipated needing and consequently wasn't properly sterilised. We put that in the fridge as soon as it was cool enough and will eat it first. We'd already given one away to some friends who visited for supper when I took this picture.

The very little jars I'm thinking might make a nice gift for someome, if I do tiny jars of jam in the summer as well.

I ate some on toast on Sunday, and I might even be converted to liking the stuff. It was nicer than I remember marmalade being.

Hedgerow Jam

21:19, Monday 15 September 2008 .. Posted in Preserving .. 1 comments .. Link

On our street there are a lot of rowanberry trees. They seem to very commonly planted by councils in suburbs, for some reason. While pootling on the web one day I discovered that they are not in fact poisonous as I'd supposed, if they're cooked thoroughly, and can be made into jam.

On a walk a few weeks ago picking blackberries we noticed that there seemed to be a very good crop of sloes this year. Since I don't really fancy making gin, I decided to try and find out if there was anything else that could be done with sloes, and I found the recipe for Hedgerow Jam on this website. All the ingredients grow wild round here, except for hazelnuts (and I don't like nuts anyway), so it looked like a good recipe to try.

On Saturday we went picking to get the ingredients, and we boiled up the strange fruits on Sunday afternoon.

We strained it overnight, and then this evening after work I added the blackberries and elderberries to the liquid and make jam. I'm not entirely sure if that's what the recipe specified; it said "pulp", which to me indicates the solid after straining, not the liquid - but the solid looked like partially digested food and didn't really seem that likely.

I made I slight error in calculation, however. I thought I would probably get about 4 jars of jam out of the recipe, so I sterilised five jars. In the end, there was enough for just over six jars, so I've had to put some in an unsterilised jar, which we'll have to keep in the fridge and use quickly.

I just hope I've done it right. I still don't think there should have been more than four jars, since I only put four pounds of sugar in, and I'm a bit afraid it may be too runny. But the saucer test worked, and that's the only way I know to test it.

Blackberry and Apple Jam

08:38, Wednesday 27 August 2008 .. Posted in Preserving .. 1 comments .. Link

Yesterday evening I managed to turn all the blackberries we picked over the weekend into Blackberry and Apple Jam. I got eleven jars of it, all told (and I probably could have done a little tiny jar as well, if I handed dripped so much of it on the cooker.

Making the Jam

Eleven jars finished and cooled

I think we may end up giving a lot of people jam as Christmas presents this year (our annual jam consumption is probably about 10-12 jars, and I don't think we want them to all be exactly the same flavour).

My biggest problem now is that I'm running short on jars. I really don't want to have to go and buy more from the shop; they're so overpriced when it's possible to get them for nothing. I'm annoyed with myself for not claiming some on camp (where the daily jam consumption is probably 6 or 7 jars).

Strawberry Jam

09:09, Thursday 26 June 2008 .. Posted in Preserving .. 0 comments .. Link

We are facing a gigantic glut of strawberries in the garden, compounded by being out and therefore not in to eat them, so last night we made jam. While I prepared the supper, Greg picked two ice-cream tubs full of strawberries and then we washed and hulled them, put 3 1/2 pounds in the beautiful preserving pan with lemon juice and started. We ended up with 6 jars of jam, which looks a little runny but not too much so hopefully that'll be alright. Unfortunately I can't have been very diligent with tightening the jars, and one of them was loose when we moved them this morning (they were too hot to move anywhere yesterday evening), so we'll have to keep that one and be sure to use it first, but we were planning to keep two or three of them, anyway.

It's possible, of course, that we did it all wrong, as I was using a Mrs Beeton recipe and Delia's How to Cook instructions on generic jam-making. When I looked at the strawberry jam recipe in Delia's Complete Cookery this morning, it was rather different. Greg commented that it's a bit like cooking the Christmas turkey - everyone has a different recipe, all of which probably work, but you can't just mix them up at random and it's very easy to get exceedingly confused.

About Me

Hello! I'm Jo, I'm 26 and I live in a small house in England with my husband. I work full time in an office, and in my spare time I help out with Sunday school and the church youth group. When I have time, I enjoy reading, cookery and crafts, and I'm trying to learn about the garden.

Links

The Cotton Patch
Sew and So
The World's Healthiest Foods
Daily Bread
Bible Gateway
E-Sword
The National Trust